Leafs Should Be Sellers & “Finger Gate”

The Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1 loss to the league-best Colorado Avalanche on Sunday afternoon capped off a nightmarish week that saw the club lose four straight on home ice to Minnesota, Detroit, Vegas, and the Avs, and move from being on the precipice of a playoff spot to being two points out of second-last in the Eastern Conference. 

The overtime victory in Colorado earlier this month may have been the high point of the Leafs season, but after going 2-1-1 on their Western road swing, Toronto needed to compile points before heading out on the road for four more road games in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest before the three-week break for the Winter Olympics. 

Some believed that Toronto just needed to get to the break to heal up some of their nagging injuries for a stretch drive, as well as making an addition on the blueline to help get over the hump, but now trailing the final Eastern Conference wildcard spot by five points, GM Brad Treliving mayn have to face the fact that going the opposite direction becoming a seller in a trade market fairly thin on sellers would be the best course of action.  

Sunday’s game is barely worth mentioning, since it followed the same blueprint as Friday night’s loss to Vegas. Toronto fell behind early, played better deeper into the game, hung around for a while, but dug themselves too big a hole to climb out of. 

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

Serving as a distraction to the train wreck of a stretch the Leafs had was what should playfully be dubbed “Finger-Gate” (and no, it has nothing to do with former defensive great Jeff Finger). As TSN cameras panned up to the press box and the packed room of injured Leafs players during the game, injured winger William Nylander playfully flipped the bird. That silly and stupid gesture serves as a narrative to Toronto’s season for a club that, at times, appears to have checked out. 

Nylander posted on his socials an apology and that it was done in a moment of frustration, but the NHL is looking into the incident. Hilariously, the league did not do anything about Vegas’s Keegan Kolesar yanking a fan’s jersey, commenting on his teammate Mitch Marner being a sellout on Friday, but that is par for the course for the league. 

The issue with the Leafs is where they go from here. They have five games remaining before the break, starting with the finale of their disastrous homestand on Tuesday against the hottest team in the NHL, the Buffalo Sabres. If Toronto gets freight-trained as they did by Minnesota, or start slowly and fail to catch up as they did against Vegas and Colorado, serious consideration has to be given to abandoning any thought of making additions before the trade deadline and instead selling off players on expiring contracts to restock the shelves of prospects and draft picks. 

The question is whether Treliving has the authority to do so. James Mirtle of the Athletic said on FAN 590 last week that there is an impression out there that the Leafs have to make the playoffs for him to save his job. If that is the case and you are Keith Pelley, are you allowing him to make any trades to add players or or to sell players? 

You could say that Toronto has had a string of bad luck when it comes to injuries and that even if this season is lost, they could turn things around next season. That might be true, but talk of a rebuild is ridiculous because they do not have their first-round picks for the next two years and have little draft capital next season. Treliving should consider anything on the table that does not include a kid like Easton Cowan, or the core players (Auston Matthews, Nylander, Matthew Knies, Tavares), build back some of their prospect base and draft capital, and clear cap space to be able to acquire talent in the summer via free agency and the trade market.